


To Sleep With You

by kjack89



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Friendship, M/M, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4786082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/kjack89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Marius has come to sleep with Courfeyrac.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Sleep With You

**Author's Note:**

> For Courfeyrac/Marius week.
> 
> I wanted to experiment with a different writing style for this.
> 
> Usual disclaimer applies. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

“I have come to sleep with you,” he says.

It is not so late in the evening yet that he is disturbing your own rest, and you can see the troubled look on his face, the loss in his eyes — though whether it is loss for his girl, the one he has spoken of, or the home, perhaps, that he can no longer inhabit, you do not know.

He looks like a puppy, a sad, pathetic thing standing outside your door in ill-fitting clothes and with that expression that makes you want to hold him and kiss him and tell him that everything will be ok, no matter how things actually will be.

You do none of these things.

You open your door wide, and step back with a bow to welcome him into your home — into the home that you two will now share.

You do not ask questions. You can tell by the look on his face that he has no desire to answer any questions, and you have little desire to put him through that. You waste no time in pulling a mattress off your bed, though you make a mental note that he shall require a real bed if he is to stay with you, and you want nothing more than that.

But for the moment, you let him inside and you give him a mattress and you pretend not to notice as he cries a little before he falls asleep at night, not because you do not wish to comfort him, but because you know he does not wish your comfort.

And the following morning, when he brings all his worldly belongings to your place, you do nothing more than smile and help him unpack.

* * *

 

It is late, and it has been a long day, and you want nothing more than to settle into your bed and let Morpheus take you to dream.

Instead, you find him sitting up in his own bed, his knees drawn up to his chin, staring out the tiny window, and even in the dim light from the single, spluttering candle, you can tell he’s been crying.

You want to reassure him, to hug his thin shoulders to you and kiss his cheek and tell him that he will find her one day. Instead, you stand at the foot of his bed, and when he finally looks up at you, you give him your biggest smile. “I have come to sleep with you,” you say, as serious as you can be while still smiling.

He smiles, just a tiny bit, and in this moment, that is enough. Without speaking, he shifts to the side, leaving enough room for you to crawl onto the mattress and wrap your arms around him and, despite your own exhaustion, hold him until he falls asleep in your arms.

* * *

 

He finds you on the barricade, after the bulk of the action on the first day has finally died down and your comrades have mostly descended into sleep. “Have you come to sleep with me?” you ask, with as much innocence as you can muster in this dark place.

He laughs, and it’s not his usual laugh, the one that errs on the side of being too loud, too ebullient, too — too everything that he is, everything that makes him wonderful and strange and perfect. This laugh is harder, and weary, and sad. But it is a laugh, and it is something you would hold on to for the rest of this night (for the rest of your life). “I do not know if I can sleep,” he confesses.

“Shall I sing you a lullabye?” you tease. “Perhaps steal some drink from Grantaire before it is all gone to lull you to sleep?”

They are not real suggestions — you do not know what peace you can offer here, now, in a place such as this. Still, he hesitates, and you wonder if he will take any of them seriously. Then, shyly, he says, with just a touch of his old boldness, “I wish that I could sleep with you, once more, as we used to when the storms would rattle the windowpanes and make the house creek.”

You remember instantly the nights in question, when you held him like a child as he shook, offering the only comfort that you could, knowing that his fear did not stem from the storm outside but the storm in his heart that you never could quite quell. And part of your heart breaks knowing that he again turns to you for that comfort, for the least you could ever offer. “I cannot,” you say, sadly. “I have the watch.”

He nods, and looks less distressed by this news than you might have thought (or even hoped, in the darker parts of your soul that have always longed for more). “Then I shall stay awake to keep you company,” he declares, and you laugh and shake your head.

You do not wake him when he falls asleep not even twenty minutes later, nodding into his hand. If you still had your coat from earlier, if you had not shed it somewhere in the barricade when you were caught up in the uprise, you would have draped it over his shoulders to keep him warm, a tenderness in your touch as you took care of him for the final time.

Instead, you just watch him (and nod at the old man who comes to stand guard over him, both of you silent companions as the night stretches on).

* * *

 

Time has passed, you suppose, though time here is different, circular and more colors and movement than the linear understanding that seems so basic now. Years, you assume, given the silver in his hair and the wrinkles on his face (though behind the wrinkles you see the boy, the boy who grew in your presence to be a man, the boy with the freckles you longed to kiss and the eyes that crinkled when he laughed), and to you it seems no time has passed at all. “Did you find her?” you ask, hoping the answer to the question is yes, because above all you wanted nothing more for him than happiness.

He nods, bashful even now. “I did.”

“And?” you press, eager for all the details of a life you never lived.

He laughs, and your chest tightens at the sound you have so missed. “And what is there to say?” he asks, suddenly turning serious. “I found her. I loved. I lived.” He looks at you. “And then I died.”

You nod and repeat perhaps the most important part, “You lived.”

He smiles again, sweet and bittersweet and pain and love and joy all wrapped in a single motion. “I did. And now I have come to tell you, one final time — I have come to sleep with you.”

Suddenly you remember what Grantaire muttered, so long ago now that it seems a dream: “ _Pure on earth but joined in heaven…they sleep among the stars_.”

And you know now what you never knew then – that he loved so completely and fully that it could never be just one, not for him. And while she was his on Earth, here, now, it is you— it has always been you.

And you laugh, laugh with such joy that will never be contained by the ages, a laugh that you both float away on, content and complete as you will sleep with each other for eternity.


End file.
